National Foods - Acquisition and Merger

Acquisition and Merger

San Miguel Corporation entered a bidding war for National Foods with New Zealand's Fonterra in 2004. National Foods board unanimously accepted the San Miguel Corporation offer. In 2005 San Miguel acquired National Foods for $1.8 billion. The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission had earlier signed off on San Miguel Corporation's various Australian acquisitions, noting "there is no overlap between San Miguel's different activities in Australia and hence no change likely to the different markets in which these businesses operate." National Foods had earlier sold its juice business to Berri Ltd. After their acquisition National Foods regained 100% ownership of Berri Ltd. in December 2005. The two operations began the merger process soon afterwards. Following the merger, National Foods became the largest citrus and fruit processor in Australia, packaging approximately 50% of all fruit juice beverages sold in Australia. This led to National Foods having 3500 employees and 20 processing plants around Australia and New Zealand, with seven milk plants, five juice plants, four speciality cheese plants, a cheese packaging plant, two dairy foods plants and a joint venture soy beverage plant.

On the 8 November 2007, San Miguel Corp. sold National Foods to Kirin Holdings Co. (which had a 20% stake in San Miguel) for $3.1 billion. National Foods became a wholly owned subsidiary of Kirin, and in 2009, when Kirin acquired Lion Nathan, the two were merged to create Lion Nathan National Foods. San Miguel no longer had any working relations with Australia.